(... Or Whatever It Takes)

There are two Mays
And then a Must
And after that a Shall.
How infinite the compromise
That indicates I will! 

~ Emily Dickinson 

Reminder

Sometimes, the only
way past something
is through it.

Always true

This is Always true: 

it’s what you do next that matters the most. 

Remembered?

BRONZE 

First

First, we sing for our hearts.

This is the blog post I tried to write

This is what I tried to write:

This is the blog post I didn't write

This is what I didn't write:

Someone please tell me

How?

Please

I'm stuck

Right/Wrong

This is true about life: no one tells you if you're getting it right. 

Many people will tell you you're getting it wrong, you're doing it wrong, even that you are wrong. They are probably wrong.  

Funnily enough, when you are actually getting it wrong, very few people will be kind or honest or brave enough to talk with you, and not at you, about what it is that's wrong, and how it is that you can start making it right. 

Even fewer will talk with you about what is wrong while staying present to what you're already doing right, even in the midst of your most terrible-seeming wrongness. 

And the most terrible-seeming wrongness is when you're doing your absolute hardest to get it right, and yet, despite all reason, all sensible effort, you still seem to be getting it wrong. Not because anyone has had those brave and kind conversations with you and you understand what needs to change, but because that wrongness veers alarmingly out of control and becomes outright failure. Not minor or short-lived failure, but big, ongoing failure, the kind that changes the landscape of your life. 

And in the middle of your failure, there are very few people who can say anything useful at all, about rightness or wrongness or anything else, unless they too have known that place of failure. 

And if they've known that place of failure, there aren't a lot of things they will say, but this is one of them: no one tells you if you're getting it right. You have to figure that out for yourself. And the most powerful place to start figuring that out is right now, in the midst of your failure. Because that's where you get to decide: is this even about rightness/wrongness, or is it about something else? (Hint: it's always about something else). And when you start thinking about what that something else is, you've already moved from judgement to assessment, and that's the first step that you - that anyone - needs to take to get to whatever it is that's right for you. 

Travel

I have many questions. I have travelled far with these questions, and I have found some answers, but with them, more questions. Always more questions. But which is heavier to carry, the question or the answer? Both, and neither. Because the action of seeking is what gives them their weight, but also gifts them with the lightness of motion and the stillness of release.

If I could...

I would tell you

I don't know what I'm doing

but I don't even know how to do that

speak

speak

#this

 this bitter love / this twisted knife / 

 this idle dream / this lying strife / 

Warmth

In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold onto this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm. 

~ Jeanette Winterson